AFRICA/EGYPT - The children of a school take position against separated classes, based on religion

Thursday, 9 October 2014

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) – The problem related to a private nursery school in the "City of 6 October", municipality of the governorate of Guizeh, where the institutes's management had decided to gather Christian pupils in reserved classes, separating them from their fellow Muslims has subsided. The young pupils themselves, with their families, asked the school administration to back track, and to avoid a religious "apartheid" that would have separated Christian and Muslim children who have become friends to share their daily life in the classroom. The school had based its decision on the basis of logistical criteria and with the intent to exempt Christian children from Islamic religion lessons. "In the Egyptian educational system, and even in Christian schools - explains to Fides Agency Anba Antonios Aziz Mina, the Coptic Catholic Bishop of Guizeh - these problems do not exist: boys and girls, Christians and Muslims share the same classes, and follow only religion classes separately. My dream, which I recognize to be a bit 'utopic, would be to have common religion classes, which explain to children the elementary contents of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, linked by common Abrahamic roots". (GV) (Agenzia Fides 09/10/2014)


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